Gonna be: Tranquil beauty and cows in the coffee fields? Or surprise-a-minute excitement and bodies under motel beds?

By Dave Barry

As a Miami resident, I was shocked when the readers of Conde Nast Traveler magazine veteran, sophisticated travelers voted Miami the worlds least
friendly place.

Are they serious I thought? Do they honestly think that my town is the least friendly travel destination on the entire planet? The same planet that
includes New York City?

I was hurt. Ive lived in Miami since 1986. And I love it. I love the climate; I love the beaches; I love the water; I love the skyline; I love the
nightlife. Above all I love the ever-changing kaleidoscope of people. Miami is no melting pot: Miami is a steaming cultural stew, constantly being spiced
by new arrivals from all over the Caribbean, Central and South America, Europe, and occasionally even the actual United States.

Compared with Miami, the rest of the U.S. seems bland to me like one giant Dayton, Ohio. This is not to disparage Dayton, which is a nice city full of
nice people. Its just that most of those people are from there, and theyre probably going to stay there, all shopping in the same malls, forever. Whereas
in Miami, it seems as though everybody you meet is from somewhere else, and will probably wind up somewhere else again, so that the city is always
changing, never static, and never ever boring.

So I asked myself: Dont the Conde Nast Traveler readers see this? Dont they feel the throbbing pulse, the passion, the energy, the excitement of my town?

And then I realized that the answer is: No, they dont. Theyre too busy trying to figure out how to exit from the rental-car lot.

Excitement City

Thas the thing about visitors: Their impressions of a travel destination are not based on the Big Picture. Visitors tend to remember the little things,
such as: Was the hotel desk clerk polite to them? Were the restrooms clean? Did they, personally, get mugged?

On this score, I have to admit, Miami doesnt do so well. For openers, Miami does not have a visitor-friendly airport. In other major tourist destinations
---Im thinking particularly of Orlando and Las Vegas the airports are spacious, inviting, brightly lit, almost theme-park-like; the message you get, from
the moment you get off your plane is : Welcome! Lets Have FUN! At Miami Internationa., a cramped and dingy labyrinth, the message is: Just TRY to Find
Our Baggage Claim Area!

Also, Miami International seems to always be under construction, although you never see anybody actually constructing anything. What you do see are signs
featuring a smiling, cartoon-airplane character named Wally Wing who gives you helpful messages like, Hi! To improve your airport, were blocking off
this corridor and forcing you to drag your luggage and extra 3.7 miles! Have a nice day!

As a frequent flier, I want to kill Wally Wing.

Speaking of violence, another problem with Miami is that unfortunate things sometimes happen to those tourists who manage to find their way out of the
airport. Not too long ago, for example, some Norwegian tourists were hijacked and robbed at gun-point while riding in a hotel courtesy van. This surely did
not create a favorable impression of Miami back in Norway, where most incidents of violence involve trains running into moose.

Likewise, South Floridas international reputation was definitely not improved by an incident last March involving a German tourist who, when checking out
of a Miami Springs hotel, complained that there was an unpleasant odor in his room. It turned out that the source of the odor you may have read about
this was a deceased person under the bed.

I want to stress, for the record, that this tourist was NOT charged extra for the additional room occupant. But still, this kind of thing had to create a
negative impression back in Germany, where (1) there are no corpses under the hotel beds, and (2) even if there were, they would be changed on a regular
basis.

And then there is Miamis language barrier. Out-of-towners are always asking me, Doesnt ANYBODY in Miami speak English? I admit that sometimes is seems
as if nobody does, but in fact virtually all Miamians know at least a few words of English. The problem is that very often these words are: No speak
English.

So you tend to hear a lot of Spanish spoken in public. This can be intimidating to a person who has not been exposed to Latin cultures, because- and I do
not meant this as a criticism Spanish tends to be spoken in a very enthusiastic manner, compared with English. Spanish-speakers will discuss a bus
schedule in the kind of intense, emotional vocal tones that people from, say, Nebraska would emit only if undergoing surgery without anesthesia. So a
non-Spanish-speaking visitor to Miami can easily get the impression, just from the decibel level of public discourse, that all the residents are absolutely
furious. Whereas in fact theyre just chatting. Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I had to admit that, as much as I love it, Miami does not
always present its friendliest face to travelers. Travelers dont want a place with too much energy, too much excitement; travelers want a place that makes
them feel safe, a place with a gentle and serene ambience, a place whose name consists almost entirely of vowels.

A place like Kauai.

No Pain, No Gain

Kauai, which is one of the Hawaiian islands, was voted the most friendly destination in the United States by the readers of Conde Nast Traveler (four other
Hawaiian islands Maui. Hawaii, Lanai and Molokai also ranked very high). What, I wondered, was Kauais secret? Is it really that different from Miami?

I realized that the only way to find out was to go to Kauai personally and hang around for a while, if necessary eating at fine restaurants and staying at
expensive resorts. No pain, no gain that is my journalistic motto.

So I flew to Kauai with my 13-year-old son, Rob, who would undoubtedly have provided many additional insights for the this article except that he has
become obsessed with his laptop computer and spent most of his time in Kauai writing an extremely complex program that he believes will some day make him
as rich as Bill Gates if he can ever figure out what the program does. Id be on a hotel balcony, admiring some heart-stopping Pacific sunset, and Id say,
Look at that sunset! And Rob, tapping away on the laptop, his eyes fixed on the screen, would say, If people pay you with MasterCard, do you get the
money right away?

I myself had an insight the moment we arrived in Kauai, namely: One reason why visitors like it so much is that theyre so happy to get out of the damned
airplane. If Kauai wanted to be really friendly, it would locate itself closer to the mainland. As it is now, you have to spend, depending on your
airline connections, approximately a month flying there, trying to get comfortable in an airline seat that I think this has something to do with the
Theory of Relativity gets progressively smaller the farther the plane goes, so that by the middle of our second week en route (around hour 163 of the
FAA-required In-Flight Movie That Nobody Ever Heard Of) your body has been compressed into a space the size of a gym locker, but somehow not as
comfortable.

So when you finish an airline journey like that, the lunar surface is going to seem hospitable. Although I have to admit that when we finally arrived at
the airport in Lihue, Kauai (after changing planes in Honolulu), it really did seem genuinely friendly. There was no sign of Wally Wing. Instead, there
were smiling people in traditional Hawaiian garb, putting leis around the necks of the people who were traveling in package-tour groups (Official Motto:
Mooooooo). This is a nice gesture, although in this modern era a person does have to be concerned about the possibility of lei-transmitted diseases. (Not
that I wish to start any rumors.)

I have to say that the car-rental procedure in Kauai was also pretty friendly. In Miami, you rent a car via a five-step procedure: (1) You board a courtesy
van; (2) If you are not hijacked, you are taken to a rental-car facility at a secret off-airport location that has been scientifically chosen on the basis
of how hard it is to get anywhere from there without getting lost; (3) You get lost; (4) You stop to ask directions from helpful local resident (No speak
English); and (5) Depending on what neighborhood you elected to get lost in, you either eventually reach you destination or wind up under a hotel bed.

Whereas in Kauai, you merely walk out of the terminal, and there, across the road, are the rental-car counters, with the cars right behind them. Also its
hard to get lost driving. Kauai is like that ride in the Tomorrowland sector of Disney World, the one where you sit in a little putt-putt car, and it
doesnt matter which way you turn the steering wheel, because all the cars are on the same track, going to the same place. There just arent that many
roads.

There arent that many people in Kauai either around 50,000 full-time residents.

We almost all know each other, or at least recognize the face, one Kauaian told me. So we might as well be friendly.

When youre driving in Kauai, other motorists constantly yield to you. You get the impression that there are Kauaians who just like to drive around
yielding, as a hobby. Sometimes they yield AND wave AND smile. This is in stark contrast to the situation in Miami, where drivers would cut off the
popemobile.

Hawaiian Crime Wave

I do not mean to suggest, however, that Kauai is some kind of unspoiled Eden, totally free of hostility, crime and violence. Au contraire. I
picked up a copy of the main Kauaian newspaper, the Garden Island, and checked out the Police Blotter, which listed these chilling incidents, among others:

There was a report of loose brown cows by the coffee filed in Lawaii.

There was a complaint about loose dogs chasing horses in a Kua Road pasture.

And lest you think that these were isolated incidents, let me note that while I was in Kauai, I personally saw a LOT of loose chickens running around in a
suspicious manner.

Kauai: Island Gripped By Fear

The Garden Islands Police Blotter also had reports of humans acting up, my favorite one being this:

A police officer in his personal car stopped at a traffic accident in Nawiliwili to see if he could be of any help, then someone in a rental car hit the
officers car. The officer said the man told him he shouldnt have been parked there and the officer asked if he couldnt see there had been an accident?
The visitor handed him his business card and said, well Im an attorney. The officer handed him his own card and said, well Im a policeman and I live
here. The attorney said hed be glad to take care of the damages.

I think it was pretty darned polite of the officer to respond to the attorneys business card by offering his own, rather than simply shooting him.

Note that the rude person in this incident was a visitor. The only act of rudeness that I experience personally, in the week I spent in Kauai, was also
committed by a visitor. This happened at the spectacularly elegant Princeville Hotel, which is where people in heaven hope to go after they die. I had
reached the front of a small line of people waiting to be seated for breakfast; the hostess turn to me, about to ask how many were in
my party, when a loud woman barged past the line, thrust herself between me and the hostess and announced I WANT TO MAKE A DINNER RESERVATION.

This woman has a diseased called line blindness. You see it a lot in certain mainland cities, especially New York, where Ive had so many people cut in
front of me that I sometimes hold my hand up in front of my face to make sure I havent turned invisible. But this was the only example I saw in Kauai. The
hostess politely excused herself from the barging woman and led me to a table.

I dont know what is her hurry, she said, looking genuinely puzzled.

Nobody else seemed to be hurrying on Kauai. Theres no need. The island is only about 30 miles across, and even at a relaxed pace you can see most of the
major sights in a few days. Actually, you can see them in about an hour if you take one of the many helicopter sightseeing tours, swooping over such
spectacular sights as the world-famous Na Pali Coast; the picture-postcard sites where Jurassic Park, South Pacific and other movies were filed;
Waimea Canyon (The Grand Canyon of the Pacific); and of course the world-famous Pacific Ocean (The Pacific Ocean of the Pacific).

We took a helicopter tour, and for the rest of my life I will carry in my mind the breathtaking images of these places, mostly blocked by the breathtaking
images of my fingers. This is because I had my hands flight. Im sure the pilot was highly skilled, but he seemed to be very casual about
how close we got to large objects such as mountains. Hed be chatting away cheerfully in our earphones, telling us some ancient Hawaiian legend about the
Menehune, or little people, who used to inhabit Kauai, and we passengers would be rigid with fear, thinking, The hell with the little people! You see
this canyon wall here, right? RIGHT??

The highlight of the tour comes when the pilot flies the helicopter right into an ancient volcanic crater, the top of which disappears into the mist and
clouds above you; inside, youre surrounded by waterfalls that seem to descend from the sky itself, cascading down the impossibly lush, green crater walls,
creating a scene that is hauntingly beautiful even if your fingers are squeezed really tight together. This is the crater that the Hawaiians call
Waialeale a word meaning Crater that is hard to pronounce.

No Menendez Brothers

This brings us to the Hawaiian language. It has the shortest alphabet in the world, consisting of only 12 letters: A, E, I, O, U plus H, K, L, M, N, P, W.
My theory is that this helps explain why the Hawaiians are so friendly: Using their alphabet, you can easily spell nice, basic, positive words such as
WOMAN, MAN, and HOME; but you cannot spell, for example, AUDIT, PROSTATE or MENENDEZ BROTHERS. Driving around Kauai, getting yielded to, I listened to
quite a bit of Hawaiian music on the radio; I never understood what the performers were singing about, of course, but it always sounded like something nice love, for example, or maybe fish.

Speaking of fish, there is one major inefficiency in the Hawaiian language, which is that a lot of words tend to contained repeated syllables. In English
when we invent a word, we tend to use a syllable once, and then get on with our business, as in the word trombone. Whereas the ancient Hawaiians would
have come up with something like trombonebone, or even Tromtrombonebone. Its as if their linguistic philosophy was, Hey, we have a simple, unhurried
lifestyle here in paradise, so why should we be in a big rush to finish our sentences? Lets add some syllables! thus the name of the official Hawaiian
State Fish I am not making this up is: Humuhumunukunukuapuaa.

While I was in Kauai, I learned how to pronounce this fish (with the help of The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook, an excellent book that I strongly
recommend if you want the kind of practical travel information that youre certainly not getting from this article). My philosophy, as an experienced
traveler, is that you never know when youre going to find yourself in an emergency situation wherein you need to name the official state fish.
Unfortunately, this never happened to me in Kauai, so on the last night, while eating dinner, I casually worked it into a conversation with the waiter, Art
Kaneakua-Miner.

By the way, Art, I said, casually, after consuming several beers, the Official Hawaiian State Fish is called Humuhumunukunukuapuaa.

All RIGHT! said Art, giving me a high five. (This is in stark contrast to what would happen in a restaurant in, for example, Paris, where, if you attempt
to pronounce a French word, the waiter will react as though you have urinated on his shoe.)

Art told me that, when hes not being a waiter, hes part of a traditional-hula dance group, and that one of the dances the group performs is called (I
think I got this right): Neeneepuailihau. This, according to Art, means Come closer to my bosoms the pretty little flower from hau tree. So far I
have not memorized this phrase, so if I ever need to use it in an emergency Hawaiian situation, Ill have to refer to my notes.

Speaking of emergency situations, there is one area in which I have to say that Miami is definitely friendlier than Kauai, and that area is: surf. South
Florida is located adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, which most of the time produces very polite, wimpy little waves that come puttering in, slap against
your shins, disintegrate into little driblets, then skulk back out to sea, defeated. Whereas Kauai is completely surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, which is
constantly producing these HUMONGOUS freight-train waves, comparable to the wave that starred in The Poseidon Adventure, the one that was powerful
enough to overturn a cruise ship containing both Ernest Borgnine AND Shelley Winters.

The result is that, although Kauai is ringed by fabulous beaches, many of them are dangerous places to swim (Hawaii leads the nation in drownings). The
Kauai travel guidebooks are filled with statements like this:

Wahiniiaaaaeleelepupubone-bone Beach is probably the most beautiful beach in the Pacific, but it is best admired from the safety of a rental car
at a distance of 300 yards, with the motor running.

If youre not an expert swimmer, you would have to be a complete fool to venture into the big Kauai surf. Or you would have to be traveling with my son.
The only thing he wanted to do, aside from working on his mystery computer program, was charge headlong into waves the size of the Appalachian mountains,
with me, the responsible parent, struggling along behind him, calling out, ROB! DONT GO TOO FAAAIEEEEEE (WHAM).

Fortunately I was always washed back onto the beach, none the worse for wear except for the fact that my heart had temporarily stopped and every orifice in
my body was filled with dense wet sand. (Even today, months later, I suspect that there is a colony of tiny Hawaiian crabs living way up in my nasal
passages.)

But the fact that I was nearly killed on numerous occasions in no way detracts from the positive impression I formed of Kauai. I have to admit that,
overall, it really is an extremely friendly tourist destination, probably the friendliest one Ive ever visited where there werent people walking around
wearing giant mouse costumes.

But I want to say this to the readers of Conde Nast Traveler: We Miami residents can be friendly, too. Granted, we dont have the advantage of being a
remote one-road island where everybody knows everybody. Were a big city, and people in big cities sometimes forget to treat each other as individuals. But
Ive found that most Miami residents are genuinely nice, once you get past their brusque urban faade and tendency to resolve traffic disputes with
automatic weapons.

So come on, travelers. When you get tired of paradise when you want a little more excitement than luaus and loose cows give Miami a chance. I bet
youll like us more than you think, and I can almost guarantee that thanks to a concerted effort on the part of the tourism industry to improve South
Floridas image there will be nobody under your hotel bed. Although it wouldnt hurt to check.